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Failed Double-Barrel Cannon and Other Weapons That Absolutely Flopped

Khalid Elhassan November 14, 2021 36 min

1. Hitler’s Obsession With Big Weapons Was of Great Help to the Allies

Panzer VIIIs were intended to spearhead German attacks, smash through any opposition and destroy all enemy armor they came across, while they remained invulnerable to damage from their opponents. With 9.4 inches of turret armor, 8 inches of hull front armor, 7 inches of hull side armor, and 6 inches of rear armor, a Maus was quite immune from Allied tanks, whose shells would simply bounce off the behemoth. However, it was built in 1944, and by then the Allies not only had aerial superiority on both the Western and Eastern front but well-nigh complete aerial supremacy over the battlefield.

The Maus did not have enough armor up top to protect it from armor-piercing bombs or rockets dropped or fired from above. Ultimately, the Maus was symptomatic of the Nazis’ and Hitler’s irrational obsession with big things and super weapons. They failed to rationally calculate the cost-effectiveness of superweapons compared to other “normal” weapons that could accomplish the same task at a fraction of the cost. Had they done so, they would have freed up scarce resources for other uses that could have better served the German war effort. Humanity is thus indebted to that Nazi and Hitlerian blind spot.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Here are our Sources:

Athenks-Clarke County Unified Government – Double Barreled Cannon

Battery B, 4^th US Light Artillery – The Athens Double-Barreled Cannon

Blair, Clay, Jr. – Silent Victory: The US Submarine War Against Japan (1975)

Defense Media Network – The Mark 14 Torpedo Scandal

Dungan, Tracy D. – V-2: A Combat History of the First Ballistic Missile (2005)

Encyclopedia Britannica – V-2 Rocket

Firearm Blog – The Worst Pistol Ever: Type 94 Nambu

Forty, George – German Tanks of World War Two (1988)

History Collection – 20 Mistakes the Axis Powers Made in World War II

History Net – Hitler Hoped to Destroy London With His V3 Supergun

Imperial War Museum – Second World War Weapons That Failed

Jacobsen, Annie – Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (2014)

Jalopnik – Russia Once Built a Very Weird Circular Ship

Johnson, Brian – The Secret War (2004)

King, Benjamin, and Kutta, Timothy – Impact: The History of Germany’s V-Weapons in WWII (1998)

History Collection – 12 Tanks of World War II – War Machines in Review

Sword Forum – 1796 Spadroon

Tank Encyclopedia – Panzer VIII Maus

Technology Org – Probably the Worst Handgun Ever Made: What Made the Type 94 Nambu So Terrible?

Times, The, June 5^th, 2009 – Replica of the Great Panjandrum, 1944 Super Weapon, to be Tested

Today in History – August 2, 1864, Grandissima Ruina

We Are the Mighty – This Is the Story of the Civil War’s Only Double-Barrel Cannon

Wikipedia – 1796 Regulation Spadroon

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.